This is a book about jurisprudence—or legal philosophy. The legal philosophical texts under consideration are—to say the least—unorthodox. Tolkien,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
,
Harry Potter
Legally Blonde
, and others are referenced as instances of what the author calls
lex populi
—"pop law". Here, however, issues of legal philosophy are heavily coded, for few of these pop cultural texts announce themselves as expressly legal.
Lex Populi
reads these texts "jurisprudentially", with an eye to their hidden legal philosophical meanings, enabling connections such as: Tolkien's Ring as Kelsen's
grundnorm
; vampire slaying as legal language's semiosis; and Hogwarts as substantively unjust.
attempts not only a jurisprudential reading of popular culture, but also a popular rereading of jurisprudence, removing it from the legal experts in order to restore it to the public at large: a
by and for the people.